


Third Time's the Charm

by Flenser



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1217986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flenser/pseuds/Flenser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why don’t you just ask Jaeger to do it?”</p><p>Armin’s face flushed impossibly redder.  “He’s my best friend,” he said a little too quickly, as if it explained anything.</p><p>Unfortunately for the poor boy, Levi thought it explained <i>everything</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

> Got a little bogged down by Rivarmin smut so I threw this together as a distraction. Enjoy!

Levi was on his way back to his office when he spotted that little blond kid that ran with Jaeger - Arlert, was it? - with his back to a wall, tiny, face flushed and a soldier built like a brick shithouse looming over him with a perverse leer on his face. He sighed; couldn’t these brats find an empty room somewhere? He huffed as he passed and the blond kid caught his eye, then quickly flicked his gaze to the floor. Levi paused. There was something off about the scene, sure, and it wasn’t just the vast size difference between the two, though he supposed that might have been creepy enough. The look Arlert gave him - he thought he recognized it, maybe.

“Come on,” the shithouse cajoled, low.

Levi twitched in annoyance and turned on his heel. “Oi,” he called and the shithouse turned his head to glare at him, then immediately straightened and stood to attention as soon as he realized who had addressed him. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Levi asked him.

“No, sir!” Shithouse responded automatically. “It’s lunch period, sir!”

Levi sighed. “Read between the lines, asshole,” he told him and rolled his eyes when Shithouse looked at him in puzzlement. “ _Get lost_.”

“Yes, sir!” Shithouse barked with a sharp salute and nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away.

Armin watched him go with an odd look on his flushed face and at last turned to address the captain. “Sir,” he said shyly.

“You all right, kid?” Levi asked him.

“Yes, sir.”

Armin was strangely placid for nearly being put against a wall and Levi wondered if it was a common occurrence. He recalled a time many years ago when his own small stature seemingly invited similar situations and felt annoyed all over again. “Don’t be afraid to drop bastards like him with a knee between the legs,” he instructed. “You won’t be punished for it.”

Armin nodded his blond head, face slowly returning to a normal color.

“Good. You’re dismissed, Arlert. Go finish your lunch.”

"Yes, sir,” he murmured with another nod. “Thank you, sir.” He saluted quickly and walked off in the opposite direction with shoulders hunched, looking even smaller and more fragile than he already was.

 

 

A few days later Levi was trying to enjoy a quiet late-night cup of tea in an empty mess hall when the sound of the door opening and two sets of feet scuffling along the stone floor caught his attention. He looked toward the front of the room to find a red-faced Armin Arlert being dragged by the wrist toward a dark corner by another boy, this one tall and lanky but still larger than the blond by nearly half as much. Since the first altercation in the hallway Levi had taken it upon himself to check Arlert’s file and had learned a psychiatric evaluation performed soon after the attack on Trost proved he had been left feeling weak and useless, but fuck, didn’t the kid have any sense of self-preservation at all?

“Arlert,” he called and the pair froze, heads whipping about to face the source of the voice and Levi didn’t have to say anything else, the larger boy suddenly dropping Armin’s wrist and bolting back toward the door to disappear down the hall. Levi fixed Armin with a stern gaze and pointed to the seat across the table from him. “Sit,” he instructed. He'd heard the kid was supposedly some kind of genius and largely responsible for the victory at Trost, but maybe Levi wasn’t clear enough the first time around.

Armin made his way over to him and sat primly on the bench indicated, eyes on the table before him.

“All right?” Levi asked him.

“Yes, sir,” Armin replied quietly.

“Why didn’t you kick him in the balls like I told you to?”

Armin’s face flushed anew and he looked away, gaze trained on some unknown point across the room. He mumbled something Levi couldn’t quite hear and jumped in surprise when Levi rapped his knuckles sharply against the surface of the table to prompt him to repeat it, blue eyes suddenly on his, wide and watery.

“It would have been counter-productive,” the boy said a little louder and dropped his gaze once again, tacking on a breathy “sir” almost as an afterthought.

Levi peered at him, silently assessing. It appeared that he might have misread the situation, but he wanted to be sure. “Speak freely, Arlert,” he said with as much gentleness as he could muster given his suspicion. “Please clarify.”

Armin closed his eyes and sighed, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Some of the others have been giving me a hard time,” he murmured, and his eyes flew open when he heard Levi’s snort of irritation. “It’s not what you think,” he added in a rush. “It’s just -” he cut himself off, teeth worrying his bottom lip and eyes once again glued to a random spot across the room. “Everyone’s been pairing off lately and getting into relationships, and I’m the only guy here who’s never even kissed anyone before.”

Levi frowned, allowing the information to sink in. “You mean you wanted that boy to kiss you?” he asked after a moment. Fucking hell.

“Yes, sir,” was Armin’s mumbled response.

“And the one before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why don’t you just ask Jaeger to do it?”

Armin’s face flushed impossibly redder. “He’s my best friend,” he said a little too quickly, as if it explained anything.

Unfortunately for the poor boy, Levi thought it explained _everything_.

“He doesn’t know about you,” Levi snorted, crossing his arms as Armin began to shrink in on himself. “You’re afraid if you ask him to do it he’ll figure you out. You’d give away your first kiss to some random asshole rather than admit your feelings for that brat.” He’d long suspected there was something a little more than friendship coming from Jaeger’s little blond dingleberry but Jaeger was such a dipshit most of the time Levi wasn’t sure if he’d even noticed. Actually, he was pretty sure he hadn’t.

“Please don’t tell him,” Armin begged in a small voice.

“I won’t,” Levi assured him and could almost feel the relief rolling off Armin in waves. “It’s not my business.” He stood, tea now long cold and unappealing and cast the boy a sidelong look. “Why don’t you want him to know?”

Armin sighed, suddenly looking weary and older than his fifteen years. “In Trost,” he began shakily, fiddling with a lock of his long hair, “I nearly died.”

Levi nodded. He’d read about that in the boy’s file.

“Three times,” Armin continued, and Levi’s eyes narrowed slightly in surprise. _That_ wasn’t in the file. “The first was when a titan found me. I was a coward...I couldn’t do anything. I froze. As it put me in its mouth all I could think about was Eren and how we’d never get to see the world together and I was devastated but...it was okay, because I knew he was alive.” He paused, breathing evenly, his slim fingers absently tracing the knots and whorls of the wood grain of the table top while he gathered his thoughts. “Eren saved me,” Armin murmured after a moment. "He pulled me out of the titan's mouth only to be swallowed himself. He sacrificed himself for me, and I was dying all over again but this time it wasn’t okay, because this time it was _Eren_ and Eren _is_ the world.”

Armin looked at Levi then, gaze suddenly heavy and sharp and Levi was struck by the intensity of his eyes, burning with what looked strangely like hatred. For...what? Titans? Himself? Levi gazed back just as intently, frozen in place, mesmerized despite himself.

“The third time was when I finally realized what I’d done,” Armin stated grimly, voice flat. His speech sounded rehearsed, as if it was something he repeated often to himself. “I caused Eren’s death through my own ineptitude. I was out of gas, incapacitated, a _burden_ , and asked Mikasa to leave me on a roof with a blade. I told her it was because I’d rather take my own life than let it end in the belly of a titan.” He didn’t explain any further, and he didn’t need to - the implication was obvious enough. “If that’s love,” Armin continued in a whisper, eyes closed, “I want to spare Eren as much of it as I can.”

Levi stared at the boy in a bit of a stupor. Before Armin spilled his guts he thought the kid was dealing with a simple crush, but the fervently delivered love confession was wholly unexpected. Even more unexpected was his rather grim outlook on the whole thing; Levi had never been in love himself, preferring to leave that kind of thing to those who knew what they were doing, but even _he_ figured it had to have been more glamorous than _that_.

“May I -” Armin started and Levi blinked down at the boy, annoyed he’d been caught staring. “May I go? Sir?” His eyes were wide and shiny with unshed tears.

Levi supposed he wanted to crawl off somewhere to cry his little lover’s heart out in privacy and he couldn’t really begrudge him the courtesy. “Dismissed,” he said with an absent wave.

“Thank you, sir,” came the murmured reply and Levi watched as Armin slipped away, head bowed and puny.

He wondered if it was possible for a person to shrink away entirely.

 

 

A week of intense drills and flurried preparations for the next excursion into titan territory passed before Levi was suddenly reminded of Armin Arlert’s little endeavor by coming across a couple of cadets necking in the supply room. He’d seen neither hide nor hair of the kid since that night and supposed he was making himself scarce in order to avoid any awkwardness between them, and he couldn't blame him; the kid's verbal diarrhea had been a little...disconcerting. Curiosity piqued, he summoned Arlert to his office and he arrived at his open door precisely at noon. Levi waved him in and gestured to the space in front of his desk as he leaned against it, arms crossed, the very picture of nonchalance.

“Arlert,” he greeted as the blond snapped a salute. “How goes your project?”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Armin asked, and Levi nodded. “Poorly, sir,” he said with a wince. “Word’s gotten around about how you always appear at the most...inopportune...of times and now no one will even come near me.”

“Unfortunate,” Levi replied. “So you’ve given up on this stupid crusade?”

“No, sir,” Armin said with a sudden defiant flash of his eyes. “Someone will forget eventually.”

“You know this would be a lot easier if you’d just ask your little friend,” he reminded him.

The kid just stared at him.

“Right,” Levi sighed with a roll of his eyes and crossed the room to the door, closing it so only a small gap remained and then went to stand directly in front of Armin, a mere inch between the toes of their boots. The boy straightened his slightly hunched shoulders in surprise but didn’t dare back away when Levi reached out and placed a cool hand on his flushed cheek.

“S-Sir?” Armin questioned tremulously.

Levi spared a quick look to his cracked open door before leaning in and pausing, his lips hovering just before a wide-eyed Armin’s. “You ready, brat?” he asked gently. The kid’s flustered breath puffed erratically against Levi’s upper lip, tickling it and he had to suppress the urge to sneeze.

Armin squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

“You wanted to see me, s -” Their guest’s voice died in his throat and Levi felt Armin’s head snap in the direction of the open door and Eren Jaeger standing just inside. “Armin?” he breathed. “Captain?”

Levi stepped away from Armin and glanced at Eren, pleased to find a hurt look on his face. “My, would you look at the time,” he drawled and whisked past Eren to the corridor beyond, shutting the door behind him. He pressed his ear against the warm wood - eavesdropping wasn’t exactly his style but neither was matchmaking, and he wanted to be sure his stupid plan worked.

“Eren, I can -”

“Are you..? And he..? Because if you are, I -”

“No! He was just -”

“Because it looked like -”

“He...I just -”

“If he was taking advantage of you I’ll fucking -”

“What? No!”

“ _Armin_ -”

“I’ve never been kissed, okay? I’ve never been kissed, and he found out and was willing to do it because no one else would.”

There was a heavy pause. Levi thought Eren mumbled something but he couldn’t quite hear, and pressed his ear a little harder to the door.

“What...did you say?”

“I said you never asked _me_.”

“I didn’t want to...to burden you.”

“Armin, you’re never a burden.”

“I am, and -”

“You're not. How could you think that?”

“You...you _died_ because of me, Eren. You died, and -”

“ _For_ you, not _because_ of you.”

“I...what?”

“You know our dream? To see the outside world? Well, it’s _your_ dream, really, and I’m just lucky you let me tag along, but...I couldn’t do it without you. Do you understand? The outside world means nothing to me without you in it.”

There were footsteps and a cut-off gasp, then profound silence. Levi pulled away from the door and stared at it, thoughtful. Fucking typical. Armin was so wrapped up in his need to keep Eren from being hurt by love that he never stopped to consider the idea that Eren had been doing the exact same thing. Considering how usually aloof Levi was to such things Armin must have been operating under a severe case of self-loathing in order to not see it. He made a mental note to make sure the kid got to talk to someone about that soon. For now, however, _one_ problem was decidedly solved.

**Author's Note:**

> Rough and dumb, but I hope you had as much fun as I did. Thanks for reading!


End file.
